J w,·_" --­ ver, and Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, eschewing the refinements and affecta­ Stream"). They are picking things up where the Parkers, Dolphys, Coltranes, tions of "classical" techniques, returned to jazz roots for inspiration, mainly the Bud Powells, and Scott LaFaros left things some years ago. blues and the mUSic ofthe black church. Into this setting stepped four saxophon­ ists who were in their own ways to change the face of jazz: Sonny Rollins, John Reprinted from MUSings: The Mustcal World ofGunther Schuller by permission ofOxford University Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, and Eric Dolphy. All four typified a revolt not only Press. Copyright © 1986 by Gunther Schuller. Cjas~'( L ~):s". <!) A T ~cn~- against the effeteness of"cool" jazz, but even against the "modem jazz» conven­ c..~I"'''i. ~b ~'- tions, a heritage left in some state of confusion by the untimely death of Charlie ~e~+~8V\..e¢"t <~D~c~'Y Parker. .(tV 8,c.Ls • ""-'.lJ 15 ~\c.':, " t <\ ~ b Both Rollins-with his prodigious facility and almost encyclopedic knowledge \ ) The Jazz Avant-Garde of musical traditions (comparable to a computer memory bank)-and Coltrane with hIS agonizing need to struggle through his musical problems in public-ex­ pressing the anguish of the artist as a serious quiet man in a violent, crude, and In the early 1960s, the African-American dramatist, novelist, poet, historian, and activist unquiet world-flirted with the avant-garde. But it was Ornette Coleman who in Amiri Baraka (born 1934) contributed many fine essays on jazz and blues to Down 1959 seemed to break all links with the past. Free forms, free rhythms, free Beat, Jazz, and Jazz Review under the name LeRoi Jones. He first received critical ac· tonality-in short, "free jazz" was the new revolutionary slogan. claim for two plays, Dutchman and The Slave, published together in 1964. During this Both Coleman and Dolphy immediately became the controversial eye of a period, he rejected the white literary tradition in favor ofexplOring themes of Black Na­ storm of revolution. While American and European intellectuals embraced tionalism. A decade later he renounced Black Nationalism, follOwing instead a path of Coleman, Miles Davis-at the advanced age of thirty-four-was putting Cole­ Marxist;-Leninist beliefs; he later abandoned these Communist leanings. Throughout his man down as a fraud; and others accused Dolphy of not "knowing his changes." distinguished career, Baraka has incorporated African-American music into all phases of (His "Stormy Weather" with Mingus is the best answer to that charge.) his creativity. He has written three books devoted solely to the development, history, and But the bitter reality was unmistakable: what little audience jazz had left by expression of African-American musical cultures: Blues People (1963), Black Music the late 1950s dropped out almost completely after the arrival of Coleman, when (1967), and The Music: &jlections onJazz and Blues (1987). In "The Ja7.z Avant-Garde" the novelty had worn off, and the avant-garde took over in force. In truth, it was (1961), Baraka identifies the rhythmiC, melodic, harmonic, and timbral advances made a difficult time for jazz. For every one Coleman, there were ten lesser or no­ by bebop musicians together with the most progressive wing ofjazz musicians, the jazz talents who sought refuge in the anarchy and permissiveness ofthe avant-gaede. avant-garde. He derides practitioners of the Third Stream, cool, and West Coast styles When in the mid-60s the rock revolution spread over the land like locusts, jazz as for their reliance on European models and practices. Baraka places a high value on musi· it was once known seemed to be emitting its last gasps. Even the avant-garde cians who seek a liberated approach to rhythmic material, greater inclusion ofbass and could barely retain its small audience, part ofit being Siphoned offby the Beatles drums, highly accented and disjunct melodic lines, elimination of functional chords and and other rock avant-gardists such as Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention. Elec­ chord progressions, use of collective improvisation, and timbral imitation ofthe human trified instruments and electronic gimmickry pervaded popular music as its deci­ voice by instrumentalists. bel-level rose to ear-pierCing extremes. Suddenly the choice for millions seemed to be between perennials like Lawrence Welk or Guy Lombardo on the one There is definitely an avant-garde in jazz today. A burgeoning group of young hand, and the one-chord, Neanderthal, thumping inanities of thousands of rock men who are beginning to utilize not only the most important ideas in «formal" groups on the other. contemporary music, but more important, young musicians who have started to But once again the cyclical pendulum came to the rescue. At this writing, as a utilize the most important ideas contained in that startling music called bebop. new generation of youngsters moves into the jazz forefront, the vacuum left by (Of course I realize that to some'of my learned colleagues almost anything that the rock debacle and the vagaries of the avant-garde is being filled by a much­ came after 1940 is bebop, but that's not exactly what I meant.) And I think this needed reassessment ofthe immediate past. Audiences who discovered that the last idea, the use of bop, is the most Significant aspect of the particular avant­ «rock revolution" was more SOCiopolitical than musical are re-discovering jazz, garde I'm referring to, since almost any so-called modem musicians can tell you not only for itself, but as, 10 and behold, an early ancestor of rock (via Rhythm all about Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Bartok, etc., or at least they think they can. I and Blues). And the lessons bequeathed by Parker, Monk, and Bud Powell, say particular avant-garde since I realize that there is also another so-called "new which were largely left unlearned by most of the avant-garde, are being restud­ music," called by some of my more serious colleagues, Third Stream which seeks ied. The either-or conflict between free and structured jazz is no longer at issue; to invest jazz with as much "classical" music as blatantly as possible. But for the young players simply do both (as with the earlier controversy over "Third jazzmen now to have come to the beautiful and lOgical conclusion that bebop was _-...-..'"'*'~ .&~..vJ""""""'4.""""""#- --.~ perhaps the most legitimately complex, emotionally rich music to come out of musician. It is the ideas that one utilizes instinctively that determine the degree this country, is,for me, a brilliant beginning for a "new" music. of profundity any artist reaches. To know, in some way, that it is better to pay at­ Bebop is roots, now, just as much as blues is. "Classical" music is not. But tention to Duke Ellington than to Aaron Copland is part of it. (And it is exactly "classical" music, and I mean now contemporary Euro-American "art" music, because someone like Oscar Peterson has instinctive profundity that technique might seem to the black man isolated, trying to exist within white culture (arty or is glibness. That he can play the piano rather handily just makes him easier to whatever), like it should be "milked" for as many dqinitions as possible, i.e., so­ identify. There is no serious instinct working at all.) lutions to engineering problems the contemporary jazz musician's life is sure to To my mind, technique is inseparable from what is finally played as content. A raise. I mean, more simply, Ornette Coleman has had to live with the attitudes bad solo, no matter how "well" it is played is still bad. responsible for Anton Webern's music whether he knows that music or not. They Aphorisms: "Form can never be more than an extension of content." (Robert were handed to him along with the whole history of formal Western music, and Creeley) "Form is determined by the nature ofmatter.... Rightly viewed, order the musics that have come to characteriz~ the Negro in the United States came is nothing objective; it exists only relatively to the mind." (Psalidas) "No one who to exist as they do today only through the acculturation of this entire history. And can finally be said to be a 'mediocre' musician can be said to possess any tech­ actually knOwing that history, and trying to relate to it culturally, or those formal nique." (Jones) . Euro-American musics, only adds to the indoctrination. But jazz and blues are "Formal" music, for the jazz musician, should be ideas. Ideas that can make it Western musics; products ofan Afro-American culture. But the definitions must easier for this modern jazz player to get at his roots. And as I have said, the be black no matter the geography for the highest meaning to black men. And in strongest of these roots are blues and what was called bebop. They sit au­ this sense European anything is irrelevant. tonomous. Blues and bebop are musics. They are understandable, emotionally, We are, all of us, rrwderns, whether we like it or not. Trumpet player Ruby as they sit: without the barest discussion of their origins. And the reason I think Braff is responsible, finally, to the same ideas and attitudes that have shaped our for this is that they are origins, themselves. Blues is a beginning. Bebop, a begin­ world as Ornette Coleman. (Ideas are things that must drench everyone, ning. They define other varieties ofmusic that come after them. Ifa man had not wHether directly or obliquely). The same history has elapsed in the world for heard blues, there is no reason to assume that he would be even slightly inter­ both ofthem, and what has gone before has settled on both of them just as surely ested in, say, Joe Oliver (except perhaps as a curio or from some obscure social as ifthey were the same man.